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Thursday, June 22, 2006

COOL IN VICTORIA

Made it to Victoria, British Columbia at 10:30 pm (Pacific time) last night. After the eight-hour layover in Toronto I had a five-hour flight to Victoria. While in the Toronto airport I did a one-hour radio interview with a Victoria station that was a promotion for my talk here tonight. Richard Sanders, a Canadian peace activist with the Ottawa-based Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, was also on the show and will be the co-presenter with me tonight in Victoria. He does alot of work trying to keep Canada out of Star Wars.

With the election of their Conservative prime minister Harper recently, keeping the Canadian aerospace industry out of the weapons in space money grab will be a tough haul. Canadians complain, like we do in the U.S., about growing corporate takeover of their government. Globalization is real for everyone these days.

I went for a nice walk this morning. The place I am staying is right on a bay so the views are quite beautiful. Islands can be seen in the distance, the air is wonderfully crisp and cool, lots of sun. A perfect day. I walked up a big hill that overlooks the ocean and then took a narrow path to a public beach where I sat and enjoyed the solitude for some time. I found myself just appreciating the great gift of travel that I have in my life. Meeting activists who are doing good work all over the world is the icing on the cake.

I leave mid-day on Friday for the trip to Vancouver. My host Susan Clarke is a leader of the Victoria Peace Coalition and she will drive us to Vancouver. We will take the ferry to get there. Should be a nice trip. Susan, and her husband Alan, have set me up with computer access, good food, and a great view. Can't ask for much more than that.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

HEADING TO VANCOUVER

Early on Wednesday morning I will be taking a bus to the Boston airport and then fly on to Victoria, British Columbia. During that long flight, I will have an eight-hour layover in Toronto. It will turn out to be a long day.

I'll speak in Victoria on Thursday evening and then head to Vancouver on Friday for the World Peace Forum. The Global Network has coordinated the space track of workshops at the forum and we are looking forward to seeing many old friends from around the world at the event. Thanks to a Secure World Foundation grant we were able to provide significant transportation assistance to 16 people so they could come to the event.

At this point we are still waiting on the Bush administration to announce their new national space policy. It is expected that the new policy will give the green light to operational testing, and likely deployment, of anti-satellite weapons (ASATS) that so far Congress and previous administrations have restricted.

Also under development at this moment is the military space plane that would give the U.S. the ability to rapidly launch attacks on any part of the world from orbit. The space plane would descend from orbit, drop an attack, then fly back up into orbit. The Space Command has been war gaming this kind of attack for the past several years using computer simulation. The first-strike attack has so far been directed, during the war games, on China.

So we have much to discuss at the World Peace Forum as we gather our key peace in space organizers and work to share what we know with many new interested people. You can expect that the U.S. government will have their spies on-hand to take names and listen for any organizing plans that come forward. We know they are watching us, and in fact reading this blog regularly. The ACLU just last week launched a national lawsuit on behalf of 40 peace groups in the U.S. who are seeking the up-to-this-point secret files gathered on them. The Global Network is one of the 40 organizations that the ACLU is representing in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

I will try to post as often as I can while on this trip but I am not certain what kind of Internet connection I will find available.

Monday, June 19, 2006

NEW YORK: The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, "the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees."

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, "the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government."

It's actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women's rights, and "ethnic cleansing."

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from "AMEmbassy Baghdad" on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: "Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord."

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, "An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq."

Among the other troubling reports:

-- "Personal safety depends on good relations with the 'neighborhood' governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust most neighbors."

-- One embassy employee had a brother-in-law kidnapped. Another received a death threat, and then fled the country with her family.

-- Iraqi staff at the embassy, beginning in March and picking up in May, report "pervasive" harassment from Islamist and/or militia groups. Cuts in power and rising fuel prices "have diminished the quality of life." Conditions vary but even upscale neighborhoods "have visibly deteriorated" and one of them is now described as a "ghost town."

-- Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May...."some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative." One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

-- It has also become "dangerous" for men to wear shorts in public and "they no longer allow their children to play outside in shorts." People who wear jeans in public have also come under attack.

-- Embassy employees are held in such low esteem their work must remain a secret and they live with constant fear that their cover will be blown. Of nine staffers, only four have told their families where they work. They all plan for their possible abductions. No one takes home their cell phones as this gives them away. One employee said criticism of the U.S. had grown so severe that most of her family believes the U.S. "is punishing populations as Saddam did."

-- Since April, the "demeanor" of guards in the Green Zone has changed, becoming more "militia-like," and some are now "taunting" embassy personnel or holding up their credentials and saying loudly that they work in the embassy: "Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people." For this reason, some have asked for press instead of embassy credentials.

-- "For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members for translation at on-camera press events....We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their 'cover.'"

-- "More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate."

-- The overall environment is one of "frayed social networks," with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. "One colleague told us he feels 'defeated' by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat," which is now reaching 115 degrees.

-- "Another employee tell us that life outside the Green Zone has become 'emotionally draining.' He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral 'every evening.'"

-- Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. "Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.....One staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day."